


Sparkles and Shimmers

by LadyAramisGrey



Series: Changeling [1]
Category: Disney - All Media Types, Disney Fairies, Sofia the First (Cartoon)
Genre: Adorable Baby Sofia, Fairies, Lots of Minor Deaths Actually, Read Your Peter Pan, Recently Widowed Roland, Teenage Cedric, fairy lore, minor deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 00:47:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13915785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAramisGrey/pseuds/LadyAramisGrey
Summary: Nobody thinks there's anything odd about the Balthazar family when they first move to Dunwiddie. Later, though, Miranda starts to wonder whether it's obliviousness or the sheer amount of magic in the land that causes these people to never bat an eye at anything strange. Still, at least her daughter's happy.





	Sparkles and Shimmers

**Author's Note:**

> There's a little girl in Enchancia who can talk to the pixies who appear once every season. And when she laughs...there's just a sparkle of power, just a shimmer of pixie dust...and a ghost of a pair of wings in her wake.
> 
> This is a one-shot for now, but may end up having a sequel that's a full story. I'm not sure - it depends on how invested in this idea I become.

When the Balthazars move to Dunwiddie hardly anyone bats an eye. Miranda Balthazar is a talented cobbler and Birk is clearly a sorcerer of some sort, though when asked he always claims to be a sailor, and at first he _did_ go out sailing frequently before settling down. People prevail upon him constantly for potions, however, even if the only magic anyone ever sees him perform himself are the tricks he does for the children of the village. He lights up with every innocent, childish laugh, but otherwise is a gloomy figure who seems to bear a great weight on his shoulders and in his heart. Miranda is eternally practical, eternally kind and eternally helpful to everyone around her. It is no wonder a couple such as this would come to such a good place as Enchancia, the villagers think, and they are welcomed with open arms.

Even their very obvious foreignness does not count against them—Miranda with her lilting Galdisian songs and Birk’s clearly Freezen name and clothes but less identifiable accent—but then, Enchancia has always been welcoming to one and all: magical, royal, commoner, and _other_. It’s a legacy of Queen Aurora’s rule, some say, or it’s because of the faun colonies which live in the forest outside the castle, others claim.

Either way, the Balthazars are welcomed and they sink easily into Dunwiddie life, into Enchancian life. A week after moving in they must go up to pay their respects to the throne. King Roland the First surveys them gravely, his young son standing pale and wan at his side. Some of the reason the couple’s move to Enchancia had been so unremarked was partly due to current circumstance. There had been a grand ceremony re-titling former Princess Matilda as Duchess Matilda only weeks ago due to inheriting a duchy from a distant relative, and on the heels of that grand event the beautiful but cold wife of the newly coined Crown Prince Roland had died in childbirth bearing twins. The very night the Balthazars had moved in there was a ball held in the twins’ honor—directly following the state funeral as was protocol.

Due to the birth and death happening so close together, there is no official mourning period. But of course, also due to this fact the king is clearly on edge, and his son is worn thin with conflicting duties.

Miranda is concerned over the young prince who looked so lost and adrift at his stern father’s side, but does nothing other than smile at him perhaps a tad more warmly than protocol dictated and then wait to be dismissed. Birk, on the other hand, is required to undergo extensive interrogation at the hands of Sorcerer Goodwyn, who is both suspicious of the foreign sorcerer and feeling his territory rather infringed upon besides. Birk’s answers are all said in dull, woebegone tones and the few tricks he’s required to perform end up lackluster at best, so they are let go to their village home with little issue.

Back in Dunwiddie the Balthazars finish getting settled in with no fanfare. Miranda befriends the candle-maker and the women of the area as she prepares to open a shoe-shop. After a month or two of frequent trips to sea Birk holes himself up near-permanently in a shed behind their cottage where he brews his potions, occasionally conjuring butterflies or bubbles for young children who come by. It isn’t long before it feels to most people as though Miranda and Birk have lived in Dunwiddie all their lives.

When Miranda begins to swell with child her friends are overjoyed, and her husband vanishes into his workshop for a month. When he appears again he is strangely erratic, vacillating between loving affection towards Miranda and utter despair when his wife is absent. Miranda bears it all as though it is expected, but is herself strangely mournful in quiet moments. Then, only days before Miranda is due, Birk unexpectedly drops dead while performing parlor tricks for a group of village children.

The children are hysterical over the incident, and the other villagers find it puzzling. Birk was of no great age, had no outstanding health issues according to Miranda and besides was already known as a talented magical healer. His death is seen as very odd, suspicious even. But all the children ever revealed was that one of the boys, Tom who was not so little any longer, had scoffed at Birk conjuring an illusion of pixies turning winter into spring.

“Fairies don’t do that,” the boy had announced. “That’s silly. My mom knows a scientist from Corinthia and _he_ says the seasons change because of the turn of the earth, not because of _magic_. It’s too big a magical undertaking, he says.”

The other children had reputedly argued back, and just after Tom had announced that he “didn’t _believe_ in season-changing fairies, okay!?” Birk had effectively ended the argument by dropping down stone dead.

The shock and grief have Miranda going into early labor, and Sofia Clarion Balthazar is born at the turn of springtime in wake of her father’s tragic death. The local midwife worried greatly that with the circumstances Miranda might have mother’s sickness and not be properly loving to her new daughter. And yet every time Miranda holds her infant daughter, her sorrows seem to drift away. The girl’s eyes are oddly aware and knowing for one so young, and Miranda finds comfort in telling her daughter many things she will never tell anyone else in this tiny village. The one thing she never tells her daughter is what happened to her husband. She simply says that Sofia’s father was lost at sea.

Sofia is Miranda’s confidant before her first birthday, and somehow it doesn’t seem at all odd. Somehow, she is sure Sofia already understands every word she says, and is simply waiting until her mouth works properly before she replies.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this strange precocity, Sofia is an imminently wonderful baby. The other villagers marvel and tell Miranda how lucky she is that baby Sofia rarely cries, hardly throws tantrums, and smiles at everyone and everything. As she grows up and her cooing turns to soft giggles friends begin to anticipate Sofia’s most major approaching milestone. Bets are quietly exchanged on how big her laugh will be, if she’ll produce one or multiple fairy-totems.

First laughs are especially important in a kingdom like Enchancia, where magical beings like fairies are welcome. Few villagers have ever met a fairy themselves, but fewer still would act as Tom and his mother do and openly disbelieve any known aspect of fairy magic. It is incredibly rare in Enchancia for a baby’s first laugh to not produce at least _one_ fairy-totem which Mainland fairies and enchanted winds will carry over the long journey to faraway Never Neverland where new fairies are born.

But contrary to Enchancian tradition, Miranda begins to keep her daughter secluded from the villagers more and more as her vocalizations become more coherent. Many people chalk it up to some strange Galdisian custom perhaps, or maybe Miranda is afraid her daughter will not have a fairy’s laugh. But Miranda never explains, and the villagers are too courteous to ask outright. Young Sofia’s first laugh occurs at her mother’s feet alone at dinner. There is no magical echo floating out the window to be caught in local plant life, but Sofia herself seems to nearly glow for hours afterwards, laughing often and babbling in baby-talk to something Miranda can’t see.

Sofia is odd in other ways as she grows older.

In keeping with Miranda’s strange belief that her daughter only needed the proper vocal range to begin speaking, Sofia does not have a first word. The first thing Sofia says is “I love you, mommy,” and Miranda’s heart just melts. Sofia then promptly starts talking in sentences and paragraphs as if she is years older than her four months. It takes her a bit longer to learn how to read, but one day when Sofia is two Miranda finds the girl reading her father’s foreign texts with no instruction at all.

She all but refuses to learn how to walk for an inordinately long period of time. She learns to stand, but never tries taking a step. Instead she hops in place, leaping in the air as if expecting the air to catch her. Every time she lands hard the little girl looks so utterly bewildered it breaks Miranda’s heart. She eventually begins toddling, but only once their neighbor’s daughter Jade, who is the same age as Sofia, goes from walking to running and Sofia cannot keep up while crawling.

Sofia refuses to eat meat once she begins eating whole foods. She does not squash bugs, and she has a strange affinity for small woodland creatures though she cannot speak with them.

As the seasons change and Sofia grows up she will spend hours outside in the garden. Once at the changing-of-seasons, Miranda peeks out the back window of their cottage and sees the amazing sight of her little four-year-old Sofia playing merrily with a small troop of pixies. The fairies dance around her in the air, and Sofia nearly seems to walk on air as well. Doves fly around her and Sofia sings as sweetly as any princess.

Miranda continues doing her shoe business despite the trials of motherhood. Once a year until Sofia is six Miranda must return to the castle to present herself to the king as a foreigner living in his lands. Sofia is always left in the care of Jade’s mother, as the girl is an Enchancian citizen due to being born within its borders. Miranda herself only becomes a citizen in Sofia’s sixth year; Miranda’s seventh living in Enchancia. King Roland I dies when Sofia is three, and the crown prince steps forward as King Roland the Second. His only son James is instated as the new Crown Prince. After that point Miranda must present herself to the new King Roland, and he is always much more interested in speaking with Miranda than his father ever was. The young king asks her questions about the village, about her job as cobbler, about her daughter whom he only knows about because all sorcerer’s children are monitored for signs of magic in Enchancia so they can be trained.

Young King Roland is charming, and Miranda finds it surprisingly easy to speak with him. He asks her every visit for parenting advice, as well, asking her opinion on this and that for the royal twins. Miranda is flattered by his questions and always answers to the best of her ability. And as the years pass, if she and Roland begin to smile at each other a bit longer and more warmly than protocol demands, well…Baileywick never says anything.

Goodwyn the Great is always there at King Roland’s shoulder, a silent but indifferent watcher. Once Miranda is nearly bowled over by his wife and daughter, who are loudly arguing over the lass in question’s gown neckline, on her way to the throne room. At some of the visits he has his son in tow—a gangly youth named Cedric who attends a sorcerer’s academy and who is training to eventually replace his father as Royal Sorcerer.

When Sofia is five she is presented to the throne as a new citizen and to be tested for magic. Miranda had been dreading it for weeks before, and the incident itself seemed to prove all her worst fears.

Cedric and Sofia regarded each other curiously as the others spoke. Then Sofia was handed a practice wand. The resulting swish turned the wand to ash and blinded everyone else in the room for several minutes. The little girl squeaked and clung to her mother in alarm. Cedric was blinking rapidly, fidgeting with his wand and looking oddly discomfited.

Once he could see around the flare-spots in his eyes, Goodwyn recommended Miranda not allow young Sofia practical experience for another few years at least and gave her magical gemstones the girl could play with.

“They’ll help her learn control,” Goodwyn told Miranda. “She just has to push her magic into them and they’ll light up. Once she can control the color and intensity of the light she’s ready to pick up a wand again.”

Sofia had insisted on hugging Cedric before she left. Miranda was a bit embarrassed, but the young man—almost twenty now and only a few years from graduating from Hexley Hall—just pats the girl gingerly on the head. Sofia laughs aloud and the young man brightens, his bemused expression turning to something a bit more cheerful. Goodwyn is amused but disinterested, and King Roland is simply entertained, so nobody but Miranda notices the odd glow around Sofia’s smiling form as she squeezes one of young Cedric’s legs in a hug. Miranda hurries her girl home before Sofia can do anything else unusual in front of the Royal Sorcerer.

The first time King Roland appears in Miranda’s shoe-shop it is weeks after Sofia’s sixth birthday and the girl in question is at school. Roland has a ridiculous hat on that he claims is to help disguise him. Miranda is mildly alarmed to find the king standing in her shop, but allows him to sit down and makes him tea. King Roland speaks with Miranda for hours, pulling his cap low over his head whenever customers come in and leaving when Sofia gets home from school. Miranda is bewildered by the encounter, but puts it out of her mind…until he reappears again in the same way two months later.

It becomes normal. King Roland slowly becomes Roland, then Rolly, and Mrs. Balthazar somehow becomes simply Miranda. Despite his being a king, Miranda almost thinks they are friends. She does come to realize, however, that Roland King of Enchancia is unspeakably lonely despite his two children and castle full of retainers. But life continues on even with Miranda’s clandestine rendevouz with the king. Sometimes he even insists on taking her to high-end restaurants for lunch Miranda could never eat at normally. Both the cobbler and her daughter find surprise gifts left on their stoop at Wassalia _and_ both their birthdays.

It takes Miranda longer than it should to realize the king is courting her, but perhaps that is to be expected. She did the majority of the effort in courting Birk, who had no idea what to do with romance or even his feelings with her. And Miranda still loves Birk dearly, even if some part of her considers him to have died even before Sofia was born. Miranda never tells Roland she’s caught on, instead content to let this strange relationship take her where it will.

As Sofia continues to grow she is the darling of the village. Roland always waits until Sofia gets home to leave, and is constantly leaving behind small trinkets or gifts for his paramour’s daughter, though Sofia never recognizes the tall stranger as the king when he passes her on the way out the door.

At school her ever-present good humor and kindly attitude keep peace among her friends. Several times, adults and children alike remark that Sofia’s laughter seems almost magical. Sometimes Miranda herself believes her daughter’s joyous laugh is tinged with the sound of bells. When that happens her eyes and hands seem to spark faintly with magical power, her clothes get just a bit inexplicably dusty…and a leap into the air leaves behind the ghostly afterimage of a pair of wings.

Nobody else seems to notice, but Miranda just smiles sadly and hugs Sofia to herself a bit tighter every time she sees it. One day her daughter will shine, but for now, Sofia is only reaching for something she does not understand.

And when her laugh shines brightest Miranda locks every wonderful sound and memory away in her heart, knowing every instant could be her last with her daughter. One day, the fairies will come and take Sofia away—and until they do Miranda will love her little miracle child, her darling changeling girl with everything she has in her.


End file.
